teen discipline

Getting your teen off your couch is often says more about your parenting skills than it does about the teen. We all need a little Parent Training because we tend to lack the courage to follow through on our directives. If it is time to take back your home this short Parent Training might be for you.

1. No problem for you.

When we rescue the teenagers in our lives from difficulties THAT THEY COULD manage, we teach them two valuable lessons. One, they can get others to do their work. This produces entitlement and in working in mental health for a decade, I can say nobody who is entitled is happy. No one.

Teenagers won’t do work that somebody else is willing to do for them. You were that way when you were a teenager. I was too. And I was good at it!

Parents should believe enough in the teenagers who are in their lives to empower them through serving in a consultant role.

2. Offer choices.

As you are listening, encouraging, consider offering some choices if the teenager is stuck.

Remember your presentation of possible choices is YOUR job. Choosing and enacting them is theirs.

Caregivers need to remember that a teenager can only score a goal if the teenager possesses the ball.

3. Consequences only.

Consequences are the teacher. Enjoyable consequences and not so enjoyable consequences.

Many folks who support teenagers, including me, are incessantly tempted to REMIND students of what they learned. I can then become construed fairly as condescending and the teenager then works to prove to me that they didn’t learn anything.

Remember, none of us like other peoples’ ideas as much as we like our own! So we can smile, listen, love, consult, hug, then leave.

4. Don’t warn or remind.

With regard to warnings and reminders, I have learned two things from the teenagers God places in my life. One, they teach others to not own what the adult intends the teenager to own.

If I remind a teenager 5 times to get off the Wii, then I’ve just taught that teenager that he doesn’t have to listen to me until the 5th time.

The real world doesn’t usually offer reminders.

5. Don’t justify or defend.

When we justify our authority, it’s because WE don’t feel you have enough of it; that’s about us not them.

Parent Training reminds caregivers that a teenager can only score a goal if the teenager possesses the ball. Call to find out more parenting tips

When we consistently rescue teenagers from the low to no risk challenges in their lives, we actually rob them of learning opportunities they need to develop feelings of agency over their lives.

Often, we as caregivers for teenagers, want SO much to reduce our perceptions of their struggles, we rescue them. This sends a potent, damaging, and unspoken message that the teenager is incapable. Who wants to teach the teenager in their lives THAT? Adolescents learn from two vehicles only: Experience and Example.

We focus on supporting teenagers through loving and empowering accountability.